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A Póvoa de Lanhoso pharmacist and cardiologist Abílio Pinto were sentenced this Monday to effective prison terms of six years and six months and five years and six months, respectively, for a scheme of false prescriptions. Four other doctors were sentenced to suspended sentences.
The scheme consisted in the prescription, by the five doctors, of drug prescriptions with high contributions (up to 90%) from the National Health Service (SNS). Subsequently, the prescriptions were delivered to the pharmacy that sent them to the SNS, receiving the respective contribution.
Between 2012 and 2015, the pharmacy billed the SNS for 2.5 million euros and of this amount, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, about half had no correspondence with the patients’ treatments. The crimes of fraud, document forgery and computer forgery, active corruption and passive corruption were attributed to all by the Public Ministry.
The doctor Abílio Pinto was accused of having been the one with the most false prescriptions: a total of 1,035 million euros between 2010 and 2015, contributed by the São José Pharmacy, which were shared by the SNS in 706 thousand euros.
The pharmacy and its owner and clinical director, Rosa María Costa, also responded for active corruption, while the doctors responded for passive corruption.
At trial, the defendant had acknowledged part of the facts, including the payment of a percentage to the doctors, and declared himself very sorry.
The defendant justified herself by stating that the SNS Bill Verification Center had returned about 40 thousand euros in prescriptions, part of which, she said, for changing prescription drugs for others with the same active ingredient.
“Hundreds of invoices were returned to me for inconsistencies that were explained and I reached a point where I had between 30 and 40 thousand euros to receive. It was at that time that I spoke with the doctors so that they transcribed the returned prescriptions so that they could return them to the Verification ”, he confessed.
The pharmacist admitted that it paid “between 5 and 10% of the amount received for each bill” to the doctor who signed it. And he did it because the clinicians “did me the favor of transcribing the prescriptions and I felt compelled to give them some money.”
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